{"id":917,"date":"2026-08-02T08:30:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T08:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/?p=917"},"modified":"2026-08-02T08:34:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T08:34:33","slug":"back-up-your-spotify-library-before-canceling-premium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/back-up-your-spotify-library-before-canceling-premium\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Back Up Your Spotify Library Before Canceling Premium"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Let me clear up the panic first, because most people arrive at this question with the wrong fear.<\/p>

Canceling Premium does not delete your playlists. It doesn’t delete your Liked Songs, your saved albums, your followed artists, or your podcast subscriptions. Spotify’s own support documentation is unambiguous about this: changing plans won’t cost you your playlists or saved music. Your account drops to the free tier and everything you spent years curating is still sitting right there.<\/p>

I’ve watched people stay subscribed for years because they thought cancelling meant starting over. It doesn’t.<\/p>

So why bother backing anything up? Because there are four other situations where you genuinely can lose the lot, and the export takes twenty minutes. Once you’ve done it, you have a portable copy of your taste that doesn’t depend on any company staying in business or on you remembering a password.<\/p>

What actually happens the day your Premium ends<\/strong><\/h2>

Cancellation doesn’t take effect immediately. You keep Premium until the end of the billing period you already paid for, and then the account flips. One exception: if you cancel during a free trial, Spotify switches you to free right away rather than at the trial’s end date, and those trials can’t be restarted.<\/p>

Once you’re on the free tier:<\/strong><\/p>

Offline downloads are gone.<\/strong> Not hidden, not paused. When Premium lapses, the app can no longer authenticate its cached files against Spotify’s licensing layer and the cache is wiped from every device. This is the only thing you truly lose, and it’s the thing you can’t back up. More on that below, because it’s the part people waste the most time trying to work around.<\/p>

Audio quality drops.<\/strong> If you’d been streaming lossless, that tier disappears. Free mobile tops out around 160 kbit\/s.<\/p>

Ads come back<\/strong>, and mobile playback gets more restrictive. The free tier is much better than its reputation suggests these days, but there’s an undisclosed daily cap on on-demand plays and a six-skip-per-hour limit.<\/p>

Audiobook hours vanish.<\/strong> Premium Individual includes a monthly listening allowance of roughly 15 hours as of mid-2026. Free doesn’t.<\/p>

Everything else survives. Playlists, Liked Songs, followed artists, saved albums, followers, playlist order. All intact.<\/p>

The four situations where a backup actually saves you<\/strong><\/h2>

You’re deleting the account, not just downgrading.<\/strong> Different thing entirely. Deletion is permanent and it takes everything with it. If you’re going that route, export first, then delete, and don’t do it in the other order.<\/p>

You’re leaving for another service.<\/strong> Playlists don’t follow you across platforms by themselves. You’ll want the data before you go, and you’ll want a record of what you had so you can check what made the trip.<\/p>

Your account gets compromised or suspended.<\/strong> Spotify has no two-factor authentication. That’s a real gap, and it means a leaked password is the whole story. Recovery windows exist but they’re finite.<\/p>

You delete a playlist by accident.<\/strong> Spotify keeps deleted playlists for about 90 days and there’s a recovery page for exactly this. Past 90 days, it’s gone.<\/p>

None of these are exotic. The third one in particular happens more than people expect.<\/p>

Method one: Spotify’s official data export<\/strong><\/h2>

Spotify has a built-in data download, and it’s the most complete picture of your account you can get. It’s also more limited than it sounds, so read to the end of this section before you rely on it.<\/p>

There are two separate requests, and most people only make one.<\/strong><\/p>

  1. Go to spotify.com in a browser and sign in. The mobile app doesn’t have this.<\/li>
  2. Click your profile picture, then Account<\/strong>.<\/li>
  3. Scroll to Privacy settings<\/strong>, then Download your data<\/strong>.<\/li>
  4. Under “What personal data can we provide?”, tick Account data<\/strong> and hit Request.<\/li>
  5. On the same page, find Extended streaming history<\/strong> and request that separately.<\/li>
  6. Confirm both through the verification emails Spotify sends. If you skip the confirmation email, nothing happens and you’ll be waiting forever for a file that was never queued.<\/li><\/ol>

    Account data usually turns up within a few days. Extended streaming history can take up to 30 days, though it’s often faster. Request both at once so they arrive around the same time.<\/p>

    What lands in your inbox is a ZIP full of JSON files. Playlist1.json<\/code> holds your playlists and their track listings. YourLibrary.json<\/code> covers saved tracks, albums, artists, podcasts, and shows. StreamingHistory_music_0.json<\/code> and its numbered siblings hold recent plays with timestamps and how many milliseconds you listened for. The account data export gives you roughly the last 30 days of listening; the extended request goes back to the day you opened the account.<\/p>

    Now the catch, and it’s a big one.<\/p>

    Spotify’s export is read-only.<\/strong> There is no import button anywhere in Spotify that accepts this file. It’s a transparency feature built to satisfy data protection law, not a backup tool, and Spotify has never pretended otherwise.<\/p>

    Worse, the playlist JSON contains track names and artist names but no Spotify track IDs and no ISRC codes. ISRCs are the unique identifier assigned to each individual recording, and without them, any attempt to rebuild your library from this file has to match by text. Text matching is unreliable in a way that becomes obvious the moment you try it. Search for “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac and you’ll find the album version, a remaster, a live cut, and two compilation appearances, all with identical names.<\/p>

    So get the official export. It’s free and it’s the only source for your full listening history. Just don’t treat it as a restore point.<\/p>

    Method two: Exportify for clean CSVs<\/strong><\/h2>

    Exportify is a free browser tool that reads your playlists through Spotify’s official API and hands you CSV files. It runs entirely in your browser and doesn’t store anything on a server, which is the right architecture for something you’re granting account access to.<\/p>

    You log in with Spotify, approve read-only permission, and get a list of your playlists with an export button beside each one. There’s a bulk option for grabbing everything at once.<\/p>

    The CSVs include the details Spotify’s own export leaves out: track URIs, ISRCs where available, album, duration, release date, and the date you added each song. That last column is quietly wonderful. Sorting a playlist by when you added things is a rough timeline of a few years of your life.<\/p>

    Because CSVs open in Excel or Google Sheets, this is also the format to use if you want to actually do something with the data. Count how many tracks you’ve saved by a given artist. Find duplicates across playlists. Work out how much of your library is from before 2010.<\/p>

    Spotify itself doesn’t offer CSV export and never has, despite people asking on the community forums since 2012.<\/p>

    Method three: transfer tools that export to file<\/strong><\/h2>

    The playlist migration services all have an export-to-file option alongside their main business of moving music between platforms.<\/p>

    Soundiiz<\/strong> exports to CSV and plain text, and it has a CSV-to-Spotify import tool for putting things back later, which is the piece Spotify’s own export is missing. The free tier caps you at 200 tracks per playlist.<\/p>

    TuneMyMusic<\/strong> covers 20-odd platforms and allows 500 tracks free.<\/p>

    FreeYourMusic<\/strong> has the most generous free allowance at 600 tracks, processes on-device rather than through a server, and runs natively on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.<\/p>

    For a genuine library backup, every one of these will need a paid tier unless your library is tiny. The pragmatic move is to subscribe for one month, export everything you care about in one sitting, then cancel. Annual plans hover around \u20ac39, and monthly is a few dollars. If you’re only doing this once, don’t buy the year.<\/p>

    I’d use Exportify for the free CSV snapshot and reach for a paid tool only if you also want the ability to restore.<\/p>

    The things people forget to back up<\/strong><\/h2>

    Playlists you made are the obvious part. Here’s what slips through.<\/p>

    Playlists you follow but didn’t create.<\/strong> These aren’t yours, and if the owner deletes one it evaporates from your library too. Most export tools skip followed playlists by default. Check the settings.<\/p>

    Liked Songs.<\/strong> It’s technically a playlist but Spotify treats it differently, and some tools miss it. For a lot of people this is the single most valuable list on the account.<\/p>

    Saved albums and followed artists.<\/strong> Rarely included by default. Worth ticking.<\/p>

    Playlist folders.<\/strong> Spotify’s API doesn’t expose folder structure at all, which means no tool can back it up. If you’ve organised 200 playlists into a careful folder hierarchy, screenshot it. Genuinely. That’s the only method that works.<\/p>

    Playlist descriptions and custom cover art.<\/strong> Usually lost. Worth screenshotting for the handful you care about.<\/p>

    Algorithmic playlists.<\/strong> Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and the daily mixes regenerate and overwrite themselves. If there’s a Discover Weekly you loved, it’s already partly gone. The habit worth building is copying anything good out of these into a real playlist the same week you hear it.<\/p>

    Collaborative playlists.<\/strong> The tracks export fine. The collaboration itself is a Spotify feature and doesn’t survive a move anywhere.<\/p>

    Local files.<\/strong> Songs you added from your own drive appear in Spotify but were never in its catalog. No export tool can retrieve them because they were never on Spotify’s servers. Make sure you still have the originals.<\/p>

    The one thing you cannot back up<\/strong><\/h2>

    The audio.<\/p>

    Every so often someone finds Spotify’s cache folder, sees files with real sizes, and thinks they’ve cracked it. They haven’t. Those files are encrypted Ogg Vorbis locked to a specific account and a specific app installation. They won’t open in any other player, won’t copy usefully to another device, and stop working the moment Premium ends. That’s not a bug in the design, it’s the design. Spotify licenses streaming rights from labels on the condition that audio never leaves the app in a playable form.<\/p>

    You’ll find plenty of software marketed at exactly this moment, promising to convert your library into MP3s before your subscription lapses. I’d stay away from it. Stripping DRM is a distinct legal violation from copyright infringement itself, covered by Section 1201 of the DMCA in the US and by equivalent provisions in the EU Copyright Directive, and it applies regardless of whether you paid for a subscription. It also breaches Spotify’s terms of use, and that category of software has a long history as a malware vector.<\/p>

    The honest framing is this: you never owned the audio. You rented access to it. What you built, and what’s genuinely worth protecting, is the metadata. The list of what you loved and when you found it. That part you can absolutely keep, and Spotify will hand it to you for free if you ask.<\/p>

    If specific songs matter enough that you want them permanently, buy them. The iTunes Store and Amazon still sell individual tracks as DRM-free files for around $1.29, Bandcamp sells directly from artists, and Qobuz does lossless. Fifteen songs you actually love costs less than two months of Premium and it’s yours regardless of what any streaming service does next.<\/p>

    The right order of operations<\/strong><\/h2>

    If you’re downgrading to free, the sequence barely matters. Nothing is at risk.<\/p>

    If you’re deleting the account, the order is critical, and getting it wrong is unrecoverable:<\/p>

    1. Request the Spotify data export and wait for the files to arrive.<\/strong> Deletion and export run on conflicting timelines. Start the deletion before your export is delivered and the export fails, permanently.<\/li>
    2. Run Exportify and save the CSVs.<\/li>
    3. If you’re moving to another service, do the transfer while the Spotify account still exists.<\/li>
    4. Screenshot your folder structure and any playlist art you care about.<\/li>
    5. Verify. Open two or three CSVs and check the track counts match what the app shows.<\/li>
    6. Only then delete.<\/li><\/ol>

      Store the exports in more than one place. A folder in cloud storage plus a copy on a local drive covers you against both a dead hard drive and a lost account.<\/p>

      After you downgrade<\/strong><\/h2>

      Reopen the app once you’re on free and check. Your playlists should all be present, downloads greyed out, everything else normal. If you re-subscribe later, downloads come back with a single re-download and nothing needs rebuilding.<\/p>

      One small note if you cancel and come back repeatedly: Spotify occasionally runs win-back offers for lapsed subscribers, usually a discounted month or two. Waiting a few weeks after cancelling sometimes produces one in your inbox.<\/p>

      And if the reason you’re leaving is that you’ve found something better elsewhere, back up first and migrate second. The export gives you a checklist to verify the move against, which is worth having when a transfer tool tells you it moved 1,847 of 1,900 songs and you’d like to know which 53 it dropped.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Let me clear up the panic first, because most people arrive at this question with the wrong fear. Canceling Premium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[398,401,393,399,397,395,402,396,400,394],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotify-music-downloader","tag-cancel-spotify-premium","tag-download-your-data-spotify","tag-export-spotify-playlists","tag-exportify","tag-playlist-backup","tag-spotify-backup","tag-spotify-csv-export","tag-spotify-data-download","tag-spotify-free-tier","tag-spotify-library"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spotidown.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}